Palm Beach back in spotlight

The Florida county that brought us the hanging chad 12 years ago is in the midst of yet another electoral mess — and the presidential election is still nearly two weeks away.

The problem this time: 27,000 filled-out absentee ballots in Palm Beach County that were misprinted and cannot be read by tabulation machines. County officials are having the results from all those ballots copied onto properly laid-out ballots, with representatives from both the Obama and Romney campaigns present.

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For those keeping score at home, George W. Bush won the White House in 2000, thanks to a 527-vote margin in Florida. That outcome followed a seemingly endless recount drama, amid voter confusion blamed on the county’s oddly designed “butterfly ballot.”

So you can’t blame anyone for being nervous about seeing the same county make more electoral history.

“Every time you duplicate a ballot, you run the risk of making a mistake, particularly with 27,000 ballots,” former Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning — whose job included overseeing the state’s elections bureaucracy — told The Palm Beach Post.

Miami attorney Raquel Rodriguez, statewide co-chair of Lawyers for Romney, objected last week to the process that county Election Supervisor Susan Bucher had designed for the hand-copying, saying it didn’t follow state law, the Post reported . “She’s inventing a procedure,” Rodriguez said.

Bucher, a former Democratic state House member, didn’t respond Wednesday to requests for comment from POLITICO.

While the county is heavily Democratic, neither campaign is willing to take any chances on winning Florida’s 29 electoral votes. Obama will need a sizable vote advantage in South Florida to overcome GOP dominance elsewhere in the state, so any voting glitches in Palm Beach County could cost him dearly.

“Our No. 1 interest is making sure that every voter can cast a ballot and have confidence that their vote will count,” Obama for America-Florida spokesman Eric Jotkoff said in a statement Wednesday.